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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sunday, January 23, 2011

If there's one thing I love, it's couples who have fun on their wedding day. Let loose a little, show some personality! And really, what better place is there to throw tradition to the wind than with the cake?

Submitted by Peter D., baker unknown. Anyone recognize it?

Dragonflies, roses, lightning, and a viking helmet?

Admit it: you wish you were invited to this reception.

This one will make your guests nostalgic for old-fashioned candy dots:

Before you're overcome by the sheer adorableness here, notice that the turtle is only supported by his four legs. That's some impressive cake architecture going on there! I'm also digging the little 3D turtle freckles (do you call them freckles?) and the texture on his shell. Just amazing.

Seen a fabulous wedding cake lately? Then send it to me at Sunday Sweets [at] Cake Wrecks [dot] com!

I love the upside-down one and the one being carried by the adorable turtle!!! Also, the Romeo and Juliet one is nice, if you like more romantic ones. They're all so perrty! Now I can't wait for an excuse to try making an amazing cake.

Meow! I'm a cat! *giggle* That sunset cake was pretty awesome: I've been trying to do that with paint for months... imagine how hard it must have benn to do it with icing. And the turtle (I prefer to say tuttle!) cake. My sixth-grade sciense teacher would have loved it!-B

I have to admit; the first cake had me wondering about the theme of the wedding for the bride and groom.

Second cake; oh, that is SO CUTE! i really liked those candies! Not so much the paper that would stick to them, of course.

I've seen a few Day of the Dead wedding cakes on shows like 'Amazing Wedding Cakes'. The ones i saw were bigger and much more colorful, but this is nice and it works if you're having a smaller wedding but want to make a splash.

I think I'm in love with the cowboy/cowgirl cake. If I have a Western-style wedding I just may try to have a cake like that.The turtle cake is pretty awesome too. It reminds me of my best friend and me always joking that our transatlantic packages are delivered by sea turtle. :P

The turtle reminded me of the Great A'Tuin... Awesome. (And seriously, when my husband and I have our remarriage with an actual wedding party, we are doing a viking cake. I married a viking. Seriously. Icelander. From Iceland ya know.)

Are you saying the turtle is CAKE??? I thought is was amazing that they could balance a wedding cake on the back of a ceramic garden turtle, then I scrolled down to see the whole thing is the cake. Amazing.

Loving the dots cake. Can just imagine how a wreckerator could take such a simple concept and mess it up.

Beautiful cakes-- proof one can have fun, be eclectic, and yet still tastefully celebrate the day. But, I couldn't help but think what wrecks these designs would have been had they been made/decorated by less skillful bakeries!

The first cake made me laugh-- it's so joyful and summery. Roses, raindrops, dragonflies-- with lightening and a helmet?! You can't help but think what a fun, lovely couple they must be, and want to be friends

I've never had candy dots, but it's well executed albeit a little girly and pastel for me.

I'm not a cat person, but that cake is adorable! It really shows their love for each other. And their pets! (Too bad not every pet is as well-loved)

NIce details, classy design, and love how they interlocked the different cakes. cool idea! I may just have to play with that next time a friend has a milestone birthday and I have to bake for a large crowd! (The challenge will be icing it-- I'm not a pro, and don't know how to work with fondant)

Love the colour blending-- just gorgeous. But I'm surprised they didn't smooth the icing a bit more; looks a little choppy. The upside is that I might be able to make something like that!

I LOVE the upside down cake! What fun-- a classic design writ a bit funky. I could totally see myself going that route. Hmmm....

I'm not sure how dead people, or a couple that suicided, are suitable for a wedding (!) but those are beautifully made cakes. And I have a skull-obsessed friend who'd totally squee over those stunningly-decorated sugar skulls.

I'm impressed with the turtle cake-- he's so well done, and even seems to have personality, I'd feel terrible cutting into him and eating him. I'd just feel like I'm further endangering the species :(

PS @Kristen's right-- if you zoom in on the first photo, you can see the clear supports under the turtle. Still really cleverly done, and the fact that those supports are so easily missed even by you guys shows how well chosen they were to not interfere with the presentation. Even more credit to the bakery!

I just re-looked at the Van Gogh cake. It is not just a Van Gogh cake, it is also a Monet cake. When you look at the other images of it on flicker you see that the bottom tier is all Monet with the water lilies. The middle tier is both because they both did hay stacks. The top tier is quite obviously Van Gogh because it's quite obviously the sky in "Starry Night."

They're not "dead people" or a "couple that suicided." El Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a Mexican tradition. It's about honoring the dead, celebrating death as a part of life. It's not glorifying suicide or anything else. There's a long tradition of designing various casts of skeleton characters, calaveras, that poke fun at the living. Sheesh. It's a gorgeous cake!

That candy dot cake just begs to be licked! Jen, I heard you on the Splendid Table on NPR yesterday and it was one of those moments when I wanted to shout "I know her!" which is completely not true, and a little stalker-ish, but I was excited to hear it. Who woulda thought; cake wrecks + npr = joy!

#5 I like this one. I'm a country guy at heart and my fiancee is a country girl (which works out nicely), so this would be very appropriate for our wedding.

#7 Again, sweet vs. wreck. It's gotta be a tough call. Maybe there could be a new category: sweet-wrecks. That sort of imagery is the last thing I want to be contemplating on my wedding day, thank you very much.

#8 proves that it is possible to have multiple cakes, architectural elements and taste all at the same time. Very sweet, and not a lighted fountain in sight.

#9 I want this one for my wedding, too. The chelonian* would symbolize perfectly how long said event has been in arriving.

*Generic term for turtles and tortoises; my contribution to the anti-EPCOT effort.

Gena - I think that Aliza was referring to the "Romeo and Juliet" cake when she was talking about "the couple that suicided." Also, if you're not familiar with the Day of the Dead, a cake with skulls on it *does* seem a little gothy. (I think it's pretty, but not for me.)

Hope you don't mind my making a second comment, but since someone took offence to a remark of mine, I'd like to apologize.

@Wendy-- thanks! That was exactly what I meant

@Gena-- Wendy's right, the suicide couple line was in reference to the end of Romeo and Juliet (I have never understood why that play stands for "romance"!). I agree with you that it's a gorgeous cake, so can we pretend that it's a romantic Victorian setting instead? :)

As for the Day of the Dead cake, I just thought it was along the lines of the cakes with movie characters or gothic symbolism (due to the topper and the recent skulls fashion trend); I didn't realize it was a religious tradition in some parts of the world (I'm from the country on the northern border of the US, so we aren't as familiar with Mexican traditions as many Americans would be). So I meant with my comment that I thought it very odd to be glorifying death when you should be celebrating the prospect of decades of life with your new spouse! I'm very, very sorry if I offended you; I had no idea that it was a way some cultures honour beloved relatives who've passed on at their weddings. I just thought it was a quirk of the couple (akin to a Viking helmet or cats or movies themed cake). I've lost a mother and a stepmother, and am looking at the possibility of a wedding in my future, so I completely understand why my comment could be upsetting to you. I just wanted to reassure you that some readers/commenters are well-intentioned, reasonably familiar with multiple cultures, but don't know them all, so may mistake a cultural reference in a cake for different taste. So, we'd welcome an explanation-- learning is one of the many bonuses of reading the comments sections on this blog. Today it's my turn to go off to Wikipedia thanks to your comment :)

And while I"m posting another comment anyway...@Craig... you have me nearly convinced I should consider a turtle/tortoise/chelonian motif if I do get married!

The turtle's (it's actually a tortoise) "freckles" are scales. Unlike many reptiles turtles or tortoises do not shed all of their skin at one time, so you often see a variety of shading. The larger scales that make up the shell, or carapace, are called scutes.

As an ailuorphile, I am in love with that kitty cake! If I knew who did it, I'd have them make me one for a BIG birthday I have coming up in a little over a year. But the others are awesome too -esp the "dot" cake! Wow.

All these awesome cakes make me want to get a weird, totally unique if unexplainable cake. Whenever I get married. Something like that biking helmet cake, where you look at it and start wondering how it came about. And that Day of the Dead cake was so pretty...albeit a bit morbid...but thats me! And hey, dont like it? Dont eat it...more for me!

I'm with Oldish Lady from 9:38 AM- I really, really, REALLY want to know the story behind the Viking/Thor/dragonfly/rain/flowers(roses?) cake aka the first cake. I read today's post first thing this AM and I hoped that by now someone would have posted the story but I don't see it in the comments. Will someone please at least make up something really fun?Thanks!

Oh wow that candy dots cake is so gorgeous! I would hate even attempting to cut into it. So nice. And I have never even eaten any candy dots lol. And awwwww to that adorable turtle. Someone rescue me from all this cuteness!

I think that the Day of the Dead themed wedding may have a little something to do with Little Big Planet. I know that seems weird, but there is a whole world devoted to a day of the dead style wedding, and they seem to have become more popular after that came out.

I would love any one of those cakes, but I would have to say the Day of the Dead cake is my favorite. Husband and I got married in Vegas on Dia Del Los Muertos. It's a big, and old tradition in both of our families and we chose that day for a different reason. Lucky for us it landed on that day. I hope those are real sugar skulls, mmmm.

The 'Romeo and Juliet' cake is a Debbie Brown design. It's clearly been personalised for a bald groom! My daughter picked out this design for me to make for her 9th birthday cake last October, so I know that there are over 150 separate pieces in the balustrades alone. Went down a treat with 30 8-to-9 year olds though!

the tortoise cake reminds me of the the book "the grey gentleman" (orig. title "momo" tranlated from german)which features a tortoise character. maybe that's the backstory? ------->

I loved that book as a kid!!But I think this is probably a connection to Sir Terry Pratchett's comic fantasy book series "Discworld", which parodies the supposed tortoise-and-elephants cosmological myth (common in a lot of mythologies, like the Chinese or the Indian), with the "Giant Star Turtle" Great A'Tuin carrying four elephants on its back, which in turn support the world on their backs.

The Romeo and Juliet cake is from Debbie Brown's Dream Wedding Cakes book which is a brilliant book if you are looking for something a little different for your wedding. The one in this post is pretty good but I have to say - Debbie does it best!

Is this is first "Tocpe" for Cake Wrecks? Rather than 50+ posts of people telling Jen or John they're wrong, we're at 72 posts...and I personally am still waiting for an explanation that explains the dragonflies and roses.

The cowboy/cowgirl cake could be a reference to the musical Oklaholma! as well. If you see a stage production of it, the opening of the musical is in the yard of a house with a windmill like that, and the backdrop is kind of sunset-ish like that.

I LOVE THE tortoise cake carrying the classic wedding cake! what a drag for the tortoise to have to balance that thing all night though... great combination of grooms cake meets traditional... Studio Cake is so super talented, they have the best design/sense of style!!

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